Cherries
by azure violet
Summary: People say I should be desolate, but I can never bring myself to stay locked in my room like some strange Rapunzel, eating cherries and only barely noticing that the salt of my incessant tears takes some of the celestial sweetness away… Remus/Ginny
1. Cherries

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Title: Cherries

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Author:
** azure ****

Author E-mail: ballena_chica@yahoo.com

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Rating: PG-13, for a slightly questionable pairing (Remus/Ginny)

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Summary: _People say I should be desolate, but I can never bring myself to stay locked in my room like some strange Rapunzel, eating cherries and only barely noticing that the salt of my incessant tears takes some of the celestial sweetness away…_ Remus/Ginny

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I look at my dark red fingers and know I've become addicted. Who knew it would hurt me so much when he took me to the orchard?

He comes monthly to talk to Ron and Hermione of old times, always leaving with a closed expression on his face. And I know why, I think. It happens to me; Ron and Hermione can't help being so in love, but it hurts me. It hurts him; his amber eyes say clearer than words that he's lost all.

People say I should be desolate, but I can never bring myself to stay locked in my room like some strange Rapunzel, eating cherries and only barely noticing that the salt of my incessant tears takes some of the celestial sweetness away. If nothing else, still living here, where I can see echoes of what once was all around me, is bad enough. Why make it worse?

Tom tries, though. Sometimes, when I forget to read myself to sleep, he haunts me, kisses me, mocks me at my talent for bungling things. But what have I bungled? What impossible task did I choose to accomplish? I can remember none.

But whenever he comes, I try to sit at the table, eating my cherries, trying to get him to remember the time he showed me bliss, began my fruit addiction. 

I was sitting at our kitchen table, it's largeness making me seem like a girl again, little Ginny who became a dolt whenever the famous Harry Potter entered the room. But when _he_ entered the room, I became sophisticated, a beautiful woman, always with the right word on her lips.

He looked at me, quietly, saying nothing except with his eyes. And I knew that _something_ was going to happen, could taste it in the air (because, at that time, he hadn't shown me, and my lovely obsession wasn't in full swing); anticipation was like static in my hair, frizzing it into a halo about my head.

For the first time, he'd invited me into his sessions with Ron and Hermione. I sat at his feet, taking in his scent of pines and campfires, of wildness. All in all, I barely heard what my brother and best friend said, but every word he uttered was imprinted on my heart. I don't really know why; I'd seen him before, even after horrible dreams with Tom, and I'd never been enamoured to his eyes before. And that's what I was. Enamoured. 

I'd never been enamoured with anyone, set aflame with love. Harry – poor, dead Harry, I loved him… But it was a love of something I knew I could never reach – a celebrity, the best friend of my older brother. And when he kissed me, once, I knew it was wrong. Had I always known that he'd have to die?

Tom was anything but love, he was lust at its worst. Was he the spider, the serpent, and I the fly, the cowering lion turned pussycat? But Tom is with me still, though, to hear anyone talk, he's dead. Didn't they say love crossed all bounds? Is hate the same way?

So I listened to him, ever more enamoured, and, when he left, I followed. It's simple, really. He led me to the orchard, which none of us have visited; Mum used to say it was haunted. But she's not here now, is she?

He helped me up onto one of the branches, full of blossom, sat me there. And, though our robes were nearly rags and my hair was a frizzy mess, though our despair showed plainly on our faces, though I felt like a withered hag at the age of twenty, and though he was twice my age, I kissed him.

Remus tasted of cherries.

~~~

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Author's Note: I rather like this as a one-shot, as I am currently writing another Remus/Ginny fic. But, if you'd like me to continue this, please leave a message in your review. And please review; reviews are like Valentines for a girl with no love life. 


	2. Stones

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Title: Stones

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Author:
** azure ****

Author E-mail: ballena_chica@yahoo.com

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Rating: PG-13, for a slightly questionable pairing (Remus/Ginny)

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Summary: _Truly, stones are not all as bitter as one might think. The stones in fruits are bitter, but each has the promise for new life, new sweetness, eventually._ Remus/Ginny

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Ron and Hermione didn't like it. They complained that my fingers would stain everything in the house, that the stones would be forgotten everywhere, that cherries were a sign of depression, that I'd leave the Ministry job that I diligently allowed a small part of my brain.

They didn't like the thought of Remus and I together kissing among blossoms; they said that it was just a fleeting love, like Harry; that we had probably lost our minds. Once, Hermione said that such things should not exist in a house such as this. I merely glanced at stared at her, my eyes screaming of Tom, of the Weasley family's almost-extermination, of Harry's sacrifice to save the wizardring world. Hadn't those things existed in this house?

When he comes for his next visit, I sit at the table, hair perfect, my best robes on, and my purple fingers, as usual, in a bowl of cherries. He smiles as he enters, takes one of my fruits, and leads me gently to the room where my brother and his wife sit like judges.

He sits me next to him, his arm around me, but his face is pale and I do not know what he thinks. He is assailed by remarks from Ron about spoiling, destroying my innocence. What innocence is left?

I am like the stone of a cherry; the sweet flesh has left me, and only the bitter skeleton is left behind.

So I throw my arms around my love's neck and laugh at what he declares to be true. Hermione looks at my pityingly, as if I have gone insane. 

He comforts me, whispering tales that are parts true and fantasy, and I quiet. How could this faded blossom of a man control me so, as if I were the violin and he the master?

Where is the girl who would have laughed in his face?

The answer has been there so long that I could recite it like some crazed schoolgirl: Tom created her, and Harry Potter killed her. It is as simple as that, as simple as the sky is blue.

So I sit like an injured bird in my werewolf's arms, and begin to sob for what could have been. Why did they all have to die?

And why do the ones remaining have to sit in empty houses and work at empty jobs and think remorseful thoughts about the might-have-beens? 

My brother begins to fidget; Hermione is stronger than I am and does not cry. The two leave, possibly to comfort eachother and assure themselves that their existence is better than any might-have-been. They will make love in the safe confines of their room, and I will sit here with my love and talk of stones.

Truly, stones are not all as bitter as one might think. The stones in fruits are bitter, but each has the promise for new life, new sweetness, eventually. Are the two of us the stones of our generation, the promise to bring forth new life in our turn?

I stroke his greying hair and laugh, quietly. He undoes the knot that took me hours in the morning, and we sit, stroking eachother's hair, laughing. The bitter and the sweet, a life, a love, a joy that should not exist but does.

We kiss again and again, and I know for certain that I can taste the sweetness of cherries in his mouth. But his eyes like the stones of our love's fruit, slightly bitter, but laughing, mocking the world.

Remus' eyes are the stones of the cherries.

~~~

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Author's Note: Almost every reviewer wanted me to continue, and thus, I have. The next two stories in the "Cherries" saga (there will be four in all, unless I become really inspired and write a sequel) will be coming before the end of the month, at which point I will thank all of my lovely reviewers. However, I'd like to say that Verity is a lovely author and you should read her writings; they're Hermione/Snape and are poetry. 

That said, won't you please review? 


	3. Trees

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Title: Stones

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Author:
** azure ****

Author E-mail: ballena_chica@yahoo.com

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Rating: PG-13, for a slightly questionable pairing (Remus/Ginny)

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Summary: _But we both would dance under the blossoms of cherry trees for the rest of our lives, and our love is as wild as the howl of a werewolf and as sweet as the fruit of the perfect cherry. _ Remus/Ginny

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Things change. Bitter stones of cherries grow into trees; blossoms grow into fruits to delight the tongue. His love has changed me from a flat grey girl to a woman the vibrant scarlet of a cherry.

We argue laughingly for much of the time we see eachother; we have both learned the art of debate and are keen on perfecting our skills. Of cherries, of love, of hate -- we talk of everything.

Almost anything, anyway. I haven't yet told my love about Tom, who comes to me more and more often in corners, trying to seduce me to him. But I grow stronger and stronger, and he is merely a shadow of my path. I need only think of my laughing, arguing love and walk away.

He does not understand why I love him, why I try so hard to patch up our frequent arguments, but I know he loves me. I do not understand why he would love me; I am not beautiful, nor particularly kind.

But we both would dance under the blossoms of cherry trees for the rest of our lives, and our love is as wild as the howl of a werewolf and as sweet as the fruit of the perfect cherry.

We were wed under the blossoms of cherry trees; Ron and Hermione had finally consented, and my love has finally come to terms that I love a werewolf, that I love him for all he is and all he isn't.

So, although not everything is perfect, I can remain content in the circle of my love's arms and think about change, of cherries, of the cottage we made beneath the cherry trees.

Hermione looks at me with sad eyes now; she is carrying Ron's child. How does my brother not see the pain in her eyes, the grief for the death of their best friend, whom she loved? They find comfort in eachother, but even I, who am inept with the feelings of others, know that her brown eyes long to meet those emerald green ones of the boy who died to save us all, to save the brown eyed girl who used to be his merry friend.

So her tree has wilted, but it is a slow death and my brother does not notice that she grows withered, that her smiles, like blossoms, come less and less frequently, that the rain of her tears is needed.

She becomes the start, twisted insanity of a dead tree and I, like a cherry tree just coming into bloom, am the only one to see it.

My hazel-eyed love twists the ring he has placed on my finger yesterday, when he pulled me unexpectedly in my white dress robes and had us married under the deluge of cherry blossoms. He seemed to shine with joy in his own black robes, and we danced under the cherry trees in an orchard once thought haunted.

White and black – the colors for death and celebration, life and death. Are we, like trees, the celebration of both? A tree is a death of the old self, the old bitter seed, but the birth of a myriad of good things through hardship. 

We were married in the haunted orchard; we are already on the brink of insanity.

But the wise woman who is my sister-in-law once told me that insanity could be blissful. And though she is like an old, dying tree, I will believe her.

Remus and I will dance under the cherry blossoms and will be reborn in eachother's arms. What sort of life could be more blissfully insane than that?

~~~

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Author's Note: And here, my darlings, ends the "Cherries" epoch. I know, 'tis a sad, sad thing, but it needs to be done, or the next bit would be horrible, and you wouldn't want that, would you? However, I have an angsty young Molly Weasley-fic in progress, and if you like this but wish it would be longer, than you will be happy to read it. 

Shoutouts to some lovely reviewers:

Aurora Magician: My first review! Thank you so much! 

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MountainDewChika:
** I feel quite special; you're the only person I've known to review two chapters three times… J And don't worry, your "cheesy phrases" are tres adorable… 
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sims: Yes, I have converted you to shipping Remus/Ginny… Mwahahaha; we shall take over the world… It's only a matter of, oh, three thousand years?

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Verity: You are quite lovely, and a quite wonderful author. I could go on and on, but, eh, you know I adore you! 

To the rest of you:

Thank you so much for reviewing; I love you to pieces and hope you've enjoyed reading!

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azure

This is depressing me, so go ahead and review and make me smile, all right? ;) 

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